4/19/2005: Virgin Mary appears in salt in freeway underpass

Undertoad • Apr 19, 2005 12:50 pm
Image

IotD will continue to document absurd Mary findings. Previously on IotD she has been seen in a tree stump and in a fence. In this case she is seen in the road salt that has dripped down onto the wall in that spot and then dried.

It's really all about the human ability to connect and see patterns and to convince themselves of what they want to see...
wolf • Apr 19, 2005 12:57 pm
I think it looks more like Madonna, the singer, you know, "Like a Virgin," not actually one.
Beestie • Apr 19, 2005 1:30 pm
Since when do the Blessed Virgin's elbows touch the ground. Her arms would have to be around nine feet long to pull that off.

Besides, that's not Mary. I asked her about it when I talked with her this morning and she just sighed, rolled her eyes and said: "Its freakin' salt, dude."
Happy Monkey • Apr 19, 2005 1:37 pm
Why would Mary be trying to lure people to their deaths?
mmmmbacon • Apr 19, 2005 1:47 pm
I think it's ridiculous when a potato that looks like the Virgin Mary sells on ebay for more than the what I payed for my car, but I have to say, that's a remarkable image. *Especially* because it's created by random road salt. Usually, I think it's absurd people give so much significance to these things, but this one is remarkably detailed and close to the actual image of a praying, veiled Mary. I can understand this one. The only problem I have is that it's a man, baby.
glatt • Apr 19, 2005 1:57 pm
I think it looks like a vagina.
LabRat • Apr 19, 2005 2:06 pm
:blush: whew, i'm not the only one who saw that before mary...
jaguar • Apr 19, 2005 2:36 pm
ditto.
warch • Apr 19, 2005 2:43 pm
quadritto. So a more ancient form of female diety worship.
lookout123 • Apr 19, 2005 3:00 pm
ok, i cannot see mary in here anywhere. the vagina does jump right though.
Happy Monkey • Apr 19, 2005 3:14 pm
Maybe if you look close enough, you can tell it's the virgin
Mary.
warch • Apr 19, 2005 3:15 pm
Ha!
Troubleshooter • Apr 19, 2005 3:38 pm
Stoopid fucking lemmings...
Elspode • Apr 19, 2005 3:49 pm
What we really need is an IOTD category of images of things that form in window glass, trees, food, etc that *aren't* Mary, but look like, perhaps, Joe DiMaggio or Bette Davis.
Troubleshooter • Apr 19, 2005 3:51 pm
What we need is for peepul to get their heads out of their asses and look for meaning and pattern inside, instead of outside.
warch • Apr 19, 2005 3:52 pm
I remember (fuzzily) an old Cheers episode where Cliff has a potato that looks like Nixon. I think the punchline is something like "Big deal, find one that doesnt".
LabRat • Apr 19, 2005 4:27 pm
Bah. What would we make fun of then???
lookout123 • Apr 19, 2005 4:28 pm
people who live in Iowa. oh wait, i do that now. ;)
LabRat • Apr 19, 2005 4:30 pm
The one and only time i tried tye dying, one of the shirts I rolled came out with a HUGE purple vagina going up the back. I couldn't have drawn one better, it was amazing. No, I don't still have it unfortunately. I wish I had taken a picture.
jaguar • Apr 19, 2005 4:41 pm
Now i look again it doesn't look very virginal either.

The one and only time i tried tye dying

That's what they all say, hippy. :joint:
mrnoodle • Apr 19, 2005 5:40 pm
Good thing not many people saw you wearing it, they'd have erected a shrine on your ass. Wait. Are we talking about vaginas that look like Marys or vice versa?

nevermind
xoxoxoBruce • Apr 19, 2005 6:42 pm
I see a penis with a fright wig. Does that mean I'm queer? :mg:
Happy Monkey • Apr 19, 2005 6:52 pm
You're the one who said I had a nice box.
capnhowdy • Apr 19, 2005 7:56 pm
.......definitely LABIA LAND.
I certainly wouldn't say virgin, though.
I wouldn't be surprised if some graffitti artist hasn't "touched it up"......
I dated a girl once who......... 10-22
:censored:
dar512 • Apr 20, 2005 1:27 am
I heard this story on the local radio. It's in Chicago on the Fullerton Avenue underpass for the Kennedy Expressway.

It still looks like a salt stain to me.
Kitsune • Apr 20, 2005 11:05 am
Doesn't the bible outright say that anything that appears prior to God appearing in the sky is a false a vision and shouldn't be trusted?

I think it looks like a vagina.

Image
mrnoodle • Apr 20, 2005 11:25 am
it says to beware of people who give signs and say this n that, because there will be many false prophets, and when the time comes, the sign will be clear to everyone, etc. etc.

I don't think this is it. I think it's a buhgina. I can see the dick with a wig, too. But hey, if it comforts someone, good for them.

We had these fake wood grain doors and a couple of them had demon faces in them. Big ones, too. And I saw a skull in the pattern of the carpet at school. All this started happening after our psychology class in which we learned about subliminal advertising. I can spot a dick in a tumbler of whiskey from a mile off.

That would be a good sig line
Vegeta • Apr 20, 2005 11:27 am
"Kiss the vagina, Timmy."

Didn't anyone see The Daily Show, uh, Monday night I think? Where some Aussie pissed the bed and said it looked like Jesus? I think that one wins for most ludicrous pseudo-religious sighting thus far, even past the cheese sammich on eBay.
pdaoust • Apr 20, 2005 11:27 am
my gosh... sigh... I find these things so sad... is this why you guys think we Cath'licks are wackos? Seriously, I think it's just people whose pattern-recognition skills have gone a little haywire... sadly, that seems to happen a lot in our church... I guess it shows that we really are a church made out of human beings.
jaguar • Apr 20, 2005 11:44 am
Re: the kid
Image
wolf • Apr 20, 2005 12:14 pm
Vegeta wrote:
"Kiss the vagina, Timmy."


Kiss the place where homeless people have been pissing for the last twenty years, Timmy.
mmmmbacon • Apr 20, 2005 12:23 pm
<troll>
Why are atheists typically so damn smug? It seems to me that to be sure there is no God is as much a matter of faith as to actively believe in one (or many). The only truly rational position is to be agnostic, which is to admit that it is unknowable.

In other words, why are you so quick to dismiss this as nothing more than an accident? Is it threatening to your worldview, perhaps, that someone might find meaning where you do not?
</troll>
mrnoodle • Apr 20, 2005 1:24 pm
mmmmbacon wrote:
<troll>
Why are atheists typically so damn smug?...The only truly rational position is to be agnostic, which is to admit that it is unknowable.

Yeah, nothing smug about an agnostic :eyebrow:

I'm a Christian, and the Mary sightings are ludicrous to me. The more of them we have, the more marginalized real miracles become. I don't see God playing Where's Waldo with the same hands-folded image of Mary over and over again. Even if some of these images are supernatural in origin, that doesn't make them divine. If we're going the mystic route, I see just as much possibility that Satan uses the images to mislead as I do that God uses them to ..... whatever they're supposed to do.
Kitsune • Apr 20, 2005 1:36 pm
I think we need more image goodness!
Troubleshooter • Apr 20, 2005 1:37 pm
mrnoodle wrote:
...the more marginalized real miracles become...


Real miracles such as what?
mrnoodle • Apr 20, 2005 2:28 pm
heh. nice try. Start a miracle thread if you like, this is the vagina picture thread.

Actually, a vagina magically appearing on a wall is pretty miraculous.
Troubleshooter • Apr 20, 2005 2:58 pm
Sorry, the effort had to be made.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled vagina bashing.
jaguar • Apr 20, 2005 3:08 pm
There is no way I can comment on that TS without it being as easy in interpret as minsinterpret.
Troubleshooter • Apr 20, 2005 3:22 pm
One does try.
xoxoxoBruce • Apr 20, 2005 8:39 pm
Good show Jag. :thumb:
I wonder in one of those online florists would deliver to the salt stain in the underpass? Maybe a mylar balloon too.
arrowtouch • Apr 23, 2005 2:41 pm
who wants to lick Lot's wife?
capnhowdy • Apr 23, 2005 9:11 pm
Now that I think about it....It looks like HER vagina.........
Elspode • Apr 23, 2005 9:54 pm
mmmmbacon wrote:
Why are atheists typically so damn smug?


Hell, I'm a polytheist, and I still want to know why we don't see more images of Leo Durocher or Guy LaFleur in salt stains and food products.
busterb • Apr 23, 2005 11:49 pm
Hell I saw my x wife in Hardes's today. She should be a piss stain on a wall somewhere. !st sighing in 35 years.OMG
wolf • Apr 23, 2005 11:53 pm
capnhowdy wrote:
Now that I think about it....It looks like HER vagina.........


I'm surprised you didn't recognize it right away.

The sow was yours, right?
wolf • Apr 23, 2005 11:54 pm
Elspode wrote:
Hell, I'm a polytheist, and I still want to know why we don't see more images of Leo Durocher or Guy LaFleur in salt stains and food products.


I see Mike Ditka in brats all the time, but I'm always too hungry to take pictures before I eat them.
xoxoxoBruce • Apr 24, 2005 4:08 am
You see Mike's what, in your brats?!? :mg:
busterb • Apr 24, 2005 8:29 am
OMG! The casting that I poster in DoDads has a Baby Jesus foot print on back side. See!
capnhowdy • Apr 24, 2005 8:41 am
wolf wrote:
I'm surprised you didn't recognize it right away.

The sow was yours, right?

Yes.....she was mine. I was inside her. :repuke:
Elspode • Apr 24, 2005 10:18 am
busterb wrote:
OMG! The casting that I poster in DoDads has a Baby Jesus foot print on back side. See!


Looks like a miraculous image of Munch's "Scream" to me.
wolf • Apr 24, 2005 11:42 am
It's Ditka again.
BrianR • May 6, 2005 11:04 am
Story from CNN.com here

I once had an image of Mary appear to me in a bagel, but hunger won out over greed and I ate it! YUM!

Brian
Troubleshooter • May 6, 2005 11:19 am
It's funny how he got arrested, but the monkeys creating the road hazard got left alone.
glatt • May 6, 2005 11:19 am
Those damn athiests just couldn't leave us alone and let us have our miracle. Damn them to Hell for all eternity! They are just jealous. At least we have the pictures of the vagina to remember it.
wolf • May 6, 2005 11:37 am
Troubleshooter wrote:
It's funny how he got arrested, but the monkeys creating the road hazard got left alone.


He defaced the bridge. In public view.

That's kind of what's supposed to happen.

The police hustling him off would also have saved him from being savaged by the crowd of loving Christians.
johne3819 • May 6, 2005 12:40 pm
here's a link from the chicago tribune, why is the girl in image #7 not arrested for the same thing as the other guy?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050419virgin-photogallery,1,7592214.photogallery?coll=chi-news-hed&index=7
johne3819 • May 6, 2005 12:57 pm
oh and I forgot the second commandment:

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin
of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me

-Exodus 20:2-17

Isn't this an idol, sure man didn't DIRECTLY make it, but man's creations made it.
Clodfobble • May 6, 2005 1:23 pm
Catholics don't have that commandment. They split another one into two (I forget which one) to keep the integrity of the "Ten" Commandments.
johne3819 • May 6, 2005 1:35 pm
Thanks for enlightening my (obviously going to hell) self!

I swear they taught us that graven images thing.

I never knew there were 3 version of the 10 commandments - one jewish one catholic and one protestant

I have found some sites that dispute your claim that catholics 'dropped' the graven images commandment, many say that it is impied in the 'short hand' version of the 2nd - Thou shall have no gods before me

Sorta of a crib notes for the commandments I guess. You'r supposed to look them up in exodus
wolf • May 6, 2005 1:53 pm
I coulda sworn they taught me the graven images thing too ... but graven images are big business for the Catholic Church ... I got my St. Dymphna medal and picture right here ... (Her feast day is May 15, don't miss it!!)

I know I always get mixed up about #5 ... I know it's about the not killin', which is apparently #6 for the Jews and the Prods?

Welcome, Johne
Trilby • May 6, 2005 1:59 pm
I thought being allowed to have graven images is what makes a Catholic a Catholic. It's fun to have idols!! :)
wolf • May 6, 2005 2:00 pm
Do I need to post the link to the Reverend Geno vs. the Virgin Mary again?
johne3819 • May 6, 2005 2:06 pm
Hello wolf, and thanks,

So CAN I worship my American Idol or not???

I guess it doesn't matter cause I can always repent at the last minute and still get in. I love that get out of jail free card!

And I still can't figure out why it's ok to vandalize a message to grandpa, but not to the world?

Must be a dead vs alive thing. Us catholics have always had more respect for dead people.
wolf • May 6, 2005 2:10 pm
There's a lot of Irish and Polish Catholics in Chicago. That may explain a lot of the ire toward the Godless defacer.
johne3819 • May 6, 2005 2:31 pm
One polish catholic (long since converted to my own spirituality) right here !

You are too right, irish, polish, and latino population massive here. Second largest community of polish outside poland is in Chicago - my home town!
Queen of the Ryche • May 6, 2005 2:35 pm
wolf wrote:
I coulda sworn they taught me the graven images thing too ... but graven images are big business for the Catholic Church ... I got my St. Dymphna medal and picture right here ... (Her feast day is May 15, don't miss it!!)


And wow, didn't she have a pretty little life? Daughter of an incestuous Pagan cheiftan who beheaded her after she ran away, because she didn't want to replace her own mother and secure the riches of the kingdom? And she turned to Christianity why? I guess Polytheism had left a bad taste in her mouth................

So if I see a tree that looks like a tree, is that a graven image for our kind?
wolf • May 6, 2005 2:47 pm
For the most part, we put the graven in the graven image. Can't swing a cat by the tail in most pagan households without knocking over a dozen assorted goddess statues and annoying the cat.
Queen of the Ryche • May 6, 2005 3:19 pm
I'm not truly a "pagan" (yet? - still learning/investigating/considering), but definitely a poly, so I have my fair share of idols (Norse, Celtic, etc.), and a couple of cats for swinging. But none made from salt stains or grilled cheese. Mine were created intentionally, blatantly; not miraculously discovered under a stinky underpass.
Elspode • May 8, 2005 12:49 am
Wouldn't it be hysterical if the roadsalt Mary actually *was* a divine miracle? Boy, wouldn't that fanatic that painted it over feel dumb...

God: "So, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Fanatic: "I...um...well...You see...Youdamnit, it says right there in the Bible that..."

God: "Don't tell me what it says in the Bible! Don't you think *I* know what it says?! You morons fucked it completely up! What it says is bullshit! Don't you people know allegory and metaphor when you read it?"
Queen of the Ryche • May 8, 2005 5:21 pm
I don't know about your god, but mine wouldn't waste its time creating a stain for people to question whether it was a miracle - my gods would slap yo in the face with lightning bolt, or something equally obvious. Maybe my kind are a bit thicker headed and need a stronger "sign" than a questionable stain under a freeway, or a possible profile on a potato chip.
wolf • May 8, 2005 5:27 pm
I dunno. These little indications of diety in everyday things may be a way of impressing upon us that everything has it's part in the dance of the sacred which we call "life."
Queen of the Ryche • May 8, 2005 5:33 pm
You're right - I guess I just see them in things other than salt stains. (Flowers and sunsets come to mind.)
wolf • May 8, 2005 5:52 pm
I'm a big fan of waking up in the morning, seeing stars at night, and a good chicken salad club sandwich ...
Troubleshooter • May 8, 2005 6:31 pm
And thus is demonstrated the intrinsic, constantly capitalized upon and excuse-ridden, need of humans to see patterns or reasons where there are no indications of either. :stickpoke
johne3819 • May 9, 2005 2:55 pm
OH man this is crazier than ever,

From todays tribune -

some ladies cleaned off the paint over the salt, in the process obviously removing some of the salt.

SO is it now a TRULY graven image - since man has altered it?

And the trib goes on to say that the reason the man [that defaced the salt stain] was arrested and the other weren't was because people saw him.

Well I've got a pic of some Jessica Navarrete writing ont the wall.

Whatever!
hampor • May 9, 2005 4:21 pm
Troubleshooter wrote:
And thus is demonstrated the intrinsic, constantly capitalized upon and excuse-ridden, need of humans to see patterns or reasons where there are no indications of either. :stickpoke


It is our nature. We look for patterns.

It was always better to mistakenly think that you saw the saber-toothed tiger, than to mistakenly not think so.
capnhowdy • May 9, 2005 8:36 pm
It's just a salt stain.....for chrissake..............
xoxoxoBruce • May 9, 2005 8:51 pm
capnhowdy wrote:
It's just a salt stain.....for chrissake..............

For Christ's sake? Really? :D